RIP Lemmy (but Happy Birthday Tom Fog)

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me – or anyone that has read this blog a handful of times – that I am not really a fan of Christmas. I find it a lonely, depressing time of the year, and so I tend to hide away over the festive season and sleep as much as possible. And this year was no exception to that. Christmas Day itself was actually ok – I managed to get very drunk and was a bought a pair of Doctor Martens as a gift (which my mum eloquently described as looking like “cripple shoes“). From Boxing Day things started to go downhill, I started to feel quite unwell generally, and the day did not really pan out the way that I had hoped it would.

I developed what doctors call “a stinking bastard of a cold” which continued until my birthday – a day I particularly dread anyway – and prevented me from going out to the pub that evening. I was not overjoyed by this birthday even more than usual – due to the age I was about to be.

It should really come as no surprise to me then, that England’s greatest rock star should drop down dead on the same day. Lemmy Kilmister, frontman of seminal heavy metal band, Motorhead, kicked the bucket on the 28th December at the age of 70 (and on my 35th birthday just to add insult to injury). Lemmy died 7 weeks after the band’s original drummer died, Phil Taylor (aka “Philthy Animal“, and not to be confused with the PDC darts player of the same name).

I was lucky enough to see Motorhead a couple of years ago – they were incredibly good and extremely loud (you can read more about the experience here), so at least I didn’t miss out on hearing them play while they were here. I can thoroughly recommend Lemmy’s autobiography, White Line Fever, as well as the documentary dedicated to him, simply titled Lemmy. He was also in Hawkwind back in the 70s, and has appeared in as a cameo in numerous low-budget horror films from Troma – all well worth checking out.

For the rest of the day I saw lots of social media posts saying “RIP Lemmy“, to which I had the morbid urge to follow with “But Happy Birthday Tom” underneath. I didn’t though, because I’m too nice. And to be honest, if my favourite rock legend is going to die during the Christmas period, I’d rather it be on my birthday, instead of say, the 27th or 29th.